BAD DAY AT BLACK CREEK
by Ballyuk
Summary: Missing scenes from 8x01 (Odyssey) to detail how Lois got into Black Creek. They never showed how she made her way to Montana so here's my attempt.
1. Investigation

**Author's Note: I do not own the characters, other than the ones I made up!**

* * *

 **BAD DAY AT BLACK CREEK.**

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Investigation.**

 _How does Chloe manage to get herself into these situations every year? Everyone always tells me I manage to find trouble but that's much truer of Chloe than it is of me. Trouble always finds me instead._

Lois looked at the mess in the living room of the Talon apartment. Turning the place over had failed to result in finding the one item she knew would help her investigation into Chloe's 'arrest' and subsequent disappearance. Actually, she reckoned she could do the job without it but the risks were too great. There was no chance she'd attempt to look at the data at work, not while the person she was investigating also owned the Daily Planet. No, it would have to be here and it really had to be now.

It hadn't taken much work for Lois to learn that her cousin had not been arrested by the authorities, and instead was in the custody (if not worse) of some shadowy organisation that almost certainly had links to Lex Luthor. The trouble was that she had had almost nothing to go on until an impromptu undercover operation to break into Lex's safe at the Luthor mansion. He hadn't been seen for weeks now and he was not the only one. Lois cringed at the thought of the French maid's outfit she'd chosen as a disguise, though she knew that any member of the opposite sex would no doubt have been appreciative of the way it highlighted her curves. Indeed, the acting COO of LuthorCorp seemed to be more than a little interested herself. Or was it an intimidation tactic?

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Where had Chloe hidden the USB device that Ollie had given her? Lois - despite her inquisitive nature - tended to avoid nosing around the personal property of those she cared about but desperate times called for desperate measures. She needed to hook up the flash drive she'd "borrowed" via said device so that she could override any security and mask the fact that the flash drive had been accessed. While no computer wiz, she'd understood what Chloe had said the device could do, and it had definitely come in handy when Lois was investigating a couple of shady business deals in Metropolis a few months ago. You can never be too careful in these situations. Chloe had let slip that Ollie had given her the device as a favour, but that little titbit was of no importance to Lois. It was a means to an end and it wasn't as though Ollie owed Lois an explanation. She went into Chloe's bedroom and stood there looking around.

 _Come on Chlo, where are you hiding it? I'd hate to have to turn your room upside down too but what choice do I have? If I could just ask you, all of this would be a moot point, right?_

Lois went to the closet and quickly sifted through Chloe's clothes, which were kept very neat and organised. Lois chuckled as she thought about the tornado aftermath that was her own closet, and then as her hand glided across what appeared to be a black negligee, she thought about how Clark would become all awkward and embarrassed at the merest sight of lacy things.

Clark! As much as he was capable of annoying her, he would have been of immense help right now. The two of them seemed to be pretty successful when investigating things even if they weren't actually working together, and she thought they dovetailed pretty well as a team when required. They'd even managed to find Chloe once before, and on another occasion had taken her to hospital when her life was on the line. Despite the banter and bickering, there really was a friendship behind it all. Neither would admit to being close though. Clark had seemed content to settle for life on the farm with Lana but that little idyll had two major drawbacks.

Firstly, Lois felt that Clark had more to offer the wider world and a stint working in the bowels of the Daily Planet might have opened his eyes a little more to the possibilities that lay out there. It was in his nature to want to help everybody, and working for the newspaper and helping to highlight the many examples of people taking advantage of others was a good way for him to do that. It got him away from the farm and his tendency to sit and brood.

Secondly, Lana had decided to leave Clark after her miraculous recovery from a coma. Lois recalled walking in on Clark after he'd watched Lana's "Dear John" DVD and she'd never seen him more heartbroken and truly devastated than he was right then. Her heart went out to him and she thought nothing of lending him a shoulder to cry on - after all, he'd done the same when she and Ollie had ended things for good. Clark had left to take care of matters unknown soon afterwards and hadn't been seen or heard from since. Lois didn't find herself worrying about him though because past experience had taught her that he had frequent spells of amnesia and/or going missing but he always came round in the end.

 _Lois, quit stalling girl. Chop chop!_

She turned to the shelf at the top of the closet and was about to dismiss a further search when she noticed a music box. She, Chloe and Lucy had all been given music boxes one Christmas when they were kids. The boxes were identical but they each played a different tune. Lois picked up the box and opened it. Sure enough, Ravel's 'Bolero' started playing. Lois rattled the box gently and felt there was something beneath the little dancing ballerina. A brief rummage and…Aha! Success! Lois lifted out the silver and green (what else!) device and said a silent prayer to the ceiling. She put the box back on the shelf and shut the closet door, exiting the bedroom and leaving it looking exactly as it was before.

 _Now we're getting somewhere!_

She looked at the mess in the lounge and thought it was something that can be sorted out later, but first things first. Powering up her laptop, she inserted the device into the USB port and waited for her computer to acknowledge it. Thankfully, it didn't require any additional technical sleight of hand and was good to go. She plugged in the flash drive into the USB slot on the device, noting that she'd taken the last one, labelled S-Z. Until now she hadn't thought as to why she'd picked that one, but now she had a hunch that information about Chloe might well be on it.

There were details about facilities under the Project 33.1 banner holding 'inmates' all over the country - a place just outside San Diego, one about 50 miles south of Chicago, another one a short drive from Cape Canaveral oddly enough, but most of the information concerned a facility called Black Creek in Montana. Lois flipped through files containing records of the 'inmates' and noted that they all seemed to be meteor infected. That usually meant they were bad news, often homicidal in fact, yet somehow they were being kept in these facilities. Perhaps they were being neutralised, or they were being collected to do somebody's bidding. She was sure they were being experimented on in some way because that was Lex's modus operandi, as his Project Ares demonstrated. These projects had claimed the lives of too many people, not least Lois' old army brat friend Wes Keenan. That sent a chill down Lois' back as she recalled what Lex's scientists had done to Wes and indicated just how far Lex was prepared to go to have the power he so obviously craved.

The names seemed to be listed in reverse alphabetical order and Lois soon came across an inmate named Wilson Turner - a man with a history of homicide and abilities which were classified if the records were to be believed. He was listed as 'released' and she wondered why somebody who was an obvious danger to the public was not in the hands of the US penitentiary system, and was seemingly free to remain at large and oblivious to the authorities. It had Lex written all over it. Lois committed the details to memory as it was definitely something that needed following up on.

Skimming more files, Lois' breath caught in the back of her throat when she came across the name Chloe Sullivan. Aside from stumbling upon her possible whereabouts (yay!), why was Chloe being held by Project 33.1? Was she a meteor freak? Was it because she had detailed knowledge about meteor freaks? Had she stumbled upon Project 33.1 while working at the Daily Planet? Was that the reason she was fired (Lex did own the paper after all)? There was nothing to explain why she was being held as maybe the records needed updating, but it did say that she was an inmate at the Black Creek facility in Montana. At least it was a lead.

Lois had been frowning whilst reading Chloe's file but once she saw the location was Black Creek in Montana, her frown slowly turned into a smirk and her eyes lit up. Her father was currently stationed at Malstrom Air Force Base in Montana, overseeing a joint training exercise between the US Army and Air Force. It was a routine posting but even routine postings tied him up for at least 2 weeks, sometimes a month or more. She'd spoken to him only three days ago and he'd asked Lois to come to the base for the weekend as a means to catch up.

That really meant he was ordering her presence and he wanted to know what was going on in her life, and why she'd maintained only very irregular contact with her sister Lucy (who'd also been ordered to travel but had cried off claiming more urgent matters needing her attention that weekend). Lois didn't really want to meet the General and face another dressing down, but an opportunity had presented itself to get to Montana and investigate Black Creek. She could even get there via military transport with just one phone call to the General.

 _OK, now I've figured out the 'who' and the 'where', it's now about the 'how'. The 'why' can wait until Chloe is safely away from Lex's clutches._


	2. Implementation

**Chapter 2: Implementation.**

It was an early morning flight and the early start meant that Lois wasn't in the best of moods. She'd barely got her caffeine fix at the apartment after still being up well past midnight, and there was of course no coffee or refreshments being served on the flight. In addition to that, she was feeling the onset of a headache stemming from the incessant small talk of Colonel Wallace who was sat beside her. The Colonel was an old friend of her father's and they'd occasionally find time to go hunting or fishing together. He'd known Lois and Lucy from when they were babies and was generally friendly and well-meaning, not leery like many of the other armed forces personnel Lois had dealt with in the past, but he just had a habit of not shutting up and his frequent pats on the shoulder meant you couldn't tune out and pretend to be listening.

 _They should send him to Gitmo to talk about his fishing boats in the interrogation room. Far less controversial than waterboarding and probably far more effective in getting people to crack I'd say._

She was glad she'd done her mental checklist before going to bed. The device had been put back in its hiding place, and Lois had even found another hiding place for the flash drive and her laptop. No way was she going to travel with the evidence! Of course that meant she needed to make copious shorthand notes of all the information she felt she'd need - her shorthand being of the sort that she could easily decipher herself but which would be a meaningless jumbled scrawl to anybody else. It was better that way, nothing incriminating if she ever found herself under interrogation, although it was the main reason she'd finished so late last night.

 _Hold on, Colonel Wallace is STILL talking!_

"Say Colonel, how is Will by the way?" Lois asked the Colonel in an attempt to control the conversation, minimise his chatter and stem her headache. William was the Colonel's son, a year or so older than Lois and a Grade A military brat in the sense that he wished for nothing more than to follow in the footsteps of his father and become a respected military figure in his own right. He would often talk about fighting for his country's freedom and she'd rib him in a Scottish accent (at least it sounded Scottish in her head) on account of him sharing his name with Mel Gibson's character in _Braveheart_.

"William? He's doing great! Got made First Lieutenant six months ago and married his fiancée last month. They've been together for a few years now and even have a daughter Gracie, who - let's see - must be about 2 years old now. She's a real cutie. One time she came up to me and…"

Lois felt the need to interrupt again but was saved by the pilot announcing that they were preparing to land in a few minutes. The good Colonel had to vacate the seat beside Lois and take his place further back as he resumed command mode and prepared to reel off a list of instructions for the assembled service personnel prior to their arrival at the base. She breathed a sigh of relief and looked out of the window. As they made the final approach, she could see the base and the line of vehicles beside the tarmac just waiting to be loaded up with people, cargo and equipment. She knew her father would not be out there to greet her but would send a junior officer to escort her to his barracks instead. She'd be easily recognisable as the only one not decked out in military fatigues.

As soon as she'd arrived at the building that housed the General's office, she could hear him barking at some poor unsuspecting minion and as she got closer to his office, it became apparent that it was a heated telephone conversation and that the other person on the line had either done or not done something that had been expressly ordered by the General. She reflected that this is who her father was - the guy routinely barked out orders and expected them to be carried out with no exceptions. He had a fearsome reputation, a even more fearsome physical presence and the most fearsome expression of disdain of anybody on the planet it would seem. He could make you wilt with just a stern look. While she disliked the impersonal and almost emotionless way he treated his daughters, she'd certainly taken on board the pull-no-punches attitude and expected to be using it to good effect very soon if all went according to plan.

She knocked on the solid wooden door as soon as it sounded like the conversation had ended, and entered once he'd acknowledged to whoever was standing there to come in. "Hi daddy."

"Lo!" The voice was far milder in tone and level of affection which surprised Lois a little bit considering how angry he'd sounded on the phone just moments ago. Clearly the General could flick the switch instantly depending on his audience.

They shared a brief chat and made dinner plans for the evening, and Lois had mentioned trailing a lead nearby for a story she was working on, and how it was convenient that he'd called and 'requested' for her to come to the base this weekend as it killed two birds with one stone. The General did mention that she'd been slack in not following up on Lucy's whereabouts but it lacked his usual harshness - it was more resigned than angry which helped Lois settle down a bit more. They were interrupted by a phone call requesting the General's presence elsewhere on the base, to which Lois responded that she was actually heading into the nearby town to start working on meeting with her lead. Fortunately her father regularly read the Daily Planet if and when he could find someone to get hold of a copy for him so he'd seen from the many articles she'd penned that she was adept at sourcing out a story, so he didn't ask any questions about her latest assignment. He merely said she should return to the base by 19:00 hours so they could have dinner together. He even arranged for a group of young servicemen to give her a ride into town as they were heading through there shortly.

 _Well this is going better than I expected!_

It was a short ride into town in the company of 3 young officers who thought nothing of a little harmless flirting with Lois, all the while wary that they were dealing with the General's daughter. They knew nothing of her hard-ass reputation but they knew the General so the line was definitely not to be crossed. Lois asked to be dropped off on the main street and thanked them with a flirty smile - harmless enough. She wandered around looking for somewhere that served a decent cup of coffee. The town, such as it was, reminded her of Smallville, right down to the rather quaint coffee shop that could pass for a much smaller version of the Talon, complete with flower stall by the entrance. She ordered a black coffee along with 2 maple doughnuts to satisfy both her caffeine deficiency and the low rumbling in her stomach, and took a seat by the window. The waitress brought over her order moments later with a cheery smile.

After a much-needed sip of the hot stuff, Lois opened her bag and put her phone in her jacket pocket along with her Sadie Blodgett ID. The pair of glasses were already on a chain around her neck. She skimmed through her notes to find the sketchy map of the location - a previous Google search of which suggested it was no more than 5 or 10 minutes on foot from the centre of town, and closer to the base itself. Mind you, two minutes away from the main street appeared to put you in the middle of nowhere, so small was the town.

Reading through the information on the flash drive the previous night, she'd noted that Project 33.1 sites had regular random inspections from LuthorCorp staff, so here was her way into the premises. She knew she could flirt, cajole or force with military fervour as the situation demanded, but she needed to make doubly sure of avoiding being spotted by finding a uniform. From Lois' experience of snooping around various Lex-controlled installations, uniforms appeared to be mandatory. It would raise fewer eyebrows if she was wearing a uniform while showing up unannounced.

 _OK Lois, it's Showtime._


	3. Intervention

**Chapter 3: Intervention.**

Lois finished her late breakfast, paid the bill (including a generous tip) and put away her notepad in another jacket pocket, then asked the waitress for some directions before leaving the coffee shop and heading in that direction, wearing the glasses. She cursed herself that they were not tinted to protect her from the sun's midday glare but at least they weren't prescription-strength so they didn't affect her vision. It wasn't long before she arrived at Black Creek.

Scanning the perimeter, she leaned against a low wall and checked her flanks to make sure no personnel or vehicles were in the vicinity. No point being spotted this early. She noticed what looked like a female worker in dark overalls walking towards a storage unit just off the main building. The figure seemed to be alone and relatively relaxed, not looking around her or acting guarded and cautious in any way. Lois spotted a gap in the chain link fence, which looked like the work of wire cutters. Had somebody already tried to get in? Had somebody tried getting out? Knowing it was a risk, she thanked her lucky stars that she didn't need to attempt to scale the fence and negotiate the barbed wire sitting atop it. She went for the gap.

 _No backing out now Lois!_

Just as the female worker was exiting the storage unit, she was slammed into the side of the door and forced back inside. She had more fight in her than Lois expected but a swift kick to the knee and a leftie haymaker into the woman's temple had her down for the count. Lois dragged the woman to one side behind some shelving containing canisters of pesticides and solvents, and looked around to make sure nobody else was there. Now the part which made Lois wince a little. It had required physical intervention since a _Terminator_ -style request for apparel was clearly never going to cut it. She had to strip the unconscious worker and take her ID and overalls. Luckily there was no walkie-talkie so no need to communicate with anybody else and since Lois was already wearing boots fairly similar to the woman's, she didn't bother to remove them.

Lois was grateful that the woman was about her size as a small pair of overalls would just look ridiculous. Even though the end game of finding Chloe was all-important, the little details still needed to be taken care of. She removed the woman's ID - Glenda something unpronounceable - and replaced the photograph and name portion with her own Sadie Blodgett alter ego. By anyone's standards, a quick glance would not suggest anything untoward. Lois checked for phones and keys, turning off Glenda's cellphone and taking the keys, clipping them to the belt loop on the overalls. She tossed Glenda's firearm and holster to the top shelf. Finding a nearby window to check her reflection and appearance, she donned the glasses again and glanced at Glenda's propped up body before leaving the storage unit. Next stop: get into the building.

"Sorry Glenda, not your fault but Sadie's got work to do."

Upon exiting the storage unit, Lois noticed a bit of a commotion and a number of Black Creek staff dashing to one of the side buildings. She was in two minds as to whether to beat a hasty retreat before being busted, in case Glenda was supposed to have been posted somewhere else on the site in the last few minutes. She made her way towards a couple of guards who were standing beside a side entrance, straightening her shoulders and getting ready to adopt the Sam Lane posture she'd long since taken to mimicking when attempting to get into or out of places she wasn't meant to be.

"What's going on? Why all the commotion?"

"And who are you?"

"Sadie Blodgett, part of the LuthorCorp inspection team that were here earlier. Don't tell me we have inmates on the loose again." It was said with enough authority that the guards were momentarily flustered and immediately took her on her word. "Did I not specifically point out that protocols were to be followed to the letter?" she huffed, quickly getting into her role.

The guards looked at each other but couldn't utter a word before Lois piped up again.

"Right, we need to fix this. I'm not having another code red situation on my watch. The company doesn't stand for orders not being followed or people doing things out of sync because that's where things go wrong and mistakes are made. And when mistakes are made, people get punished." Noticing the dumbfounded expressions on their faces, she decided to go full Sam Lane and removed her glasses. "What are you girls waiting for, mommy to hold your hand? Let's move!"

They made their way into the building, and Lois quickly marched ahead of them in order to maintain the ruse and look like she knew what she was doing. The idea was to go around past each cell until she found Chloe's. It was a huge risk again and she knew they were armed but hey, she was Lois Lane damnit! Ridiculous Risk-taker was probably her middle name.

As they moved along the corridor, she asked one guard to maintain lookout for any stray inmates while the other was tasked with opening doors. She had a set of keys but didn't want to risk using them and give the game away now. Some of the doors had different access keys and she knew the guards had a better understanding of the premises so it was the right thing to do. It kept the guards occupied as they were focussed on the task at hand, and it left no time to question who exactly this Sadie woman was.

They'd made their way down the long corridor through four sets of doors and looked into 12 different cells, none of which contained Chloe but all of which were occupied by an inmate. Lois decided to play up her irritation and keep the guards onside by pointing out just how bad it was for LuthorCorp staff to make mistakes. They were more likely to be helpful if they were worried about being part of the problem and about how non-cooperation could quickly send their job prospects downwards.

"I can't believe it. One alarm clock malfunction and suddenly you're demoted and sent to _Deliverance_ territory!"

Just as she walked through the doors with the guards marching behind her, she spotted a presence in her peripheral vision to the right. Stealing a glance, her eyes widened in shock when she saw the one person she absolutely did not expect to see at this very moment. She let out a huff of surprise and took a couple of steps towards the person in question, who was standing next to an open door along the corridor with an all-too-familiar confused expression on his face and a slightly dishevelled appearance.

"What the hell are YOU doing here?!"

* * *

 **FIN.**


End file.
